Second Xbox 360 lawsuit hits Microsoft

Another lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft, alleging that the company's Xbox 360 console damages game discs. The suit, filed Monday with a Los Angeles federal court by state residents Christine Moskowitz and David Wood reads:

"Microsoft improperly and/or negligently manufactured the Xbox 360 console in a manner that causes the expensive game discs ... to be scratched, rendering the games unusable"
A similar lawsuit was submitted to a south Florida court the week before. Both cases claim that the Xbox 360 console damaged their discs and that Microsoft refused to replace the ruined games or pay for them, and now they are each seeking a total of $5 million in damages for Xbox 360 owners affected by the alleged product defect.

Earlier this month, Microsoft acknowledged that in fact a hardware defect in the console was leading to "an unacceptable number" of general hardware failures. To deal with the problem, Microsoft said it would set aside more than $1 billion to extend the warranty for the Xbox 360 to three years. However, the company did not acknowledge that 360 was scratching game disks and rendering them unusable.

Responding to the Florida lawsuit last week, Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said: "Out of the millions of Xbox consoles in use, Microsoft has not received any widespread reports of Xbox 360s scratching discs."